20 years of helping girls escape sex trafficking

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20 years of helping girls escape sex trafficking

At 14 years of age, Rekha had barely stepped into puberty when she was cruelly thrust into commercial sex work. A wide-eyed Rekha had trusted a man she called ‘brother’, only to find herself sold off to a pimp at a Kamathipura brothel.

“It was like a prison from where there was no escape. The madam who bought me would send clients daily to rape me. I kept wondering why I had met with this fate,” she recounted, while speaking to DNA.

And yet, she is the luckier few of the over 20,000 girls who get trafficked and sold into the flesh trade. She managed to escape that world thanks to the effort of Bombay Teen Challenge (BTC), which has been rescuing trafficked women for over two decades.
As part of its 20th anniversary celebrations this year, BTC released a photo book ‘CAGE’, by Hazel Thompson on Sunday in the city.

The book retraces the journey of two girls, Rekha and Lata, from their villages to their Kamathipura nightmare.

“The project was both challenging and physically draining. I was battling typhoid and the gangsters hired by brothel owners at the same time,” Hazel told DNA, adding, “The more time I spent with the girls, the more emotionally involved I got. I still ask myself whether I was able to do justice to the cause.”

While the spotlight on HIV/AIDS has led to much focus on sex workers and their plight, intervention strategies largely focus on the health aspect.

“While funding plays an important role in deciding the agenda, there needs to be more focus on the prevention of trafficking and the effective rescue, relief and rehabilitation of victims,” said KK Devraj, executive director of Bombay Teen Challenge.

Devraj added, “If this intervention happens in time, it breaks the vicious cycle where the older victims later on become brothel keepers themselves and start looking for young recruits.”

According to Devraj, there is a need for intervention in villages across the country, from where most victims are brought, to contain and eradicate the problem.

Couple traveling to India to fight child sex slavery By FRAN MAYE

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Couple traveling to India to fight child sex slavery By FRAN MAYE.

KENNETT SQUARE — When Mary Cairns discovered that young girls in India rarely get a basic education and many are sold as sex slaves, she knew she wanted to do something about it.

Going to India, she thought, would be cost-prohibitive. And what about her interior decorating business in the borough she built up over the years? And she'd have to leave her pets behind.

Cairns decided that with her two children grown, now was the time. So she leaves for India this Saturday with her boyfriend of more than a year, Mike Mays.

"There are 27 million sex slaves in our world and a lot of them are children," Cairns said. "Girls are either kidnapped or sold by their families into slavery. Families sell them because they are desperate for money. The atrocity of this issue got me interested in wanting to go to India."

Cairns and Mays will be traveling to the Partdada Pardadi Girls School in Anupshahar, Uttar Pradesh, India, about 80 miles east of Delhi. They will be there for six months and will help teach girls at the school to set them up for success later in life.

The school was established about 10 years ago by Sam Singh, a native of India who headed up DuPont's headquarters in India. He used his retirement savings to build the school, and his goal was to take one girl from each of the poorest families in the villages and give them basic education and some training.

As an incentive for the girls to go to school, Singh set up a fund to pay them the equivalent of 25 cents a day for each day they attend school. If they go from fifth grade to 12th grade, they can make about $750, which sets them on the road to economic self-sufficiency.

The money can only be taken out when they reach age 21 or when they are married. The money cannot be accessed by a man, even their father.

"Up until now, girls had never gone to school over there," Mays said. "Girls worked in the field. The Indian government provides basic education, but it's only the boys who go to school."

Mays will instruct teachers in English, life skills, and use of computer programs like Microsoft Word and Excel. He will bring standardization to teaching practices, and aid with marketing and fundraising. He had to quit his job as a software engineer in order to make the trip.

And Cairns too made a leap of faith. She's having friends take care of her business she's had in the borough for 25 years. Cairns and Mays estimate they are spending about $20,000 each of their own money to make the trip.

Trip, though, isn't the word Cairns and Mays like to use. It's more of a mission.

"We can work with the girls there, get them educated, provide them with educational training that will reduce their risk of ending up in slavery," Cairns said.

Recently a teacher's colony, complete with a modern building, was built in the area. Cairns and Mays are elated they will at least have electricity (for about six hours a day) and running water.

"We're leaving our lives behind here," said Cairns, 53, who previously had done some missionary work in Jamaica. "After 9/11, we all realize how fragile life is. Most people will never take this risk.

"I love my business, I love doing what I'm doing," Cairns said. "But I'm hanging window treatments, making people's houses pretty, but there's more to life than that. Gratification comes from making a difference in the world."

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Child Sex Trafficking Growing in the U.S.: 'I Got My Childhood Taken From Me' 

WASHINGTON, May 5, 2010

M.S. was 12 years old when she first fell in love. It was his "swagger" that attracted her, she recalled, laughing.

The pre-teen, who lost her mother at a very young age and only saw her father on holidays, said she desperately craved a father figure. All she ever wanted was to be loved, she said, and she thought she found that in the man who patrolled up and down her street wooing her.

"I just fell into his arms," said M.S., who didn't want her full name revealed because she is a minor.

One day, the man invited M.S. to go on a drive with him. She did, and she never returned home.

For four years, M.S. was forced into child prostitution with four different pimps. She was taken from city to city, forced to have sex with random men against her will. She rarely got to keep any of the $1,500 she made every day. Instead, she was abused mentally and physically by both her pimps and other girls who he housed.

"I got my childhood taken from me," M.S., now 17, told ABC News. "I used to think this is what I'm supposed to do, and I just did it. ... It was normal to us."

M.S. was scared to run away, afraid that her pimps would turn their threats into hurting her family into reality. Even when, two years after being sold into sex, M.S. found out that her grandmother and sister had put out fliers looking for her and had even put her name on the missing persons list, she didn't contact them.

"I was scared of them judging me," she recalled.

M.S. is one of thousands of American girls who are part of sex trafficking chains in the United States. It is a problem many associate with developing countries, but is one that is increasingly plaguing the United States.

"I think many Americans are more willing to accept that there are girls enslaved in Cambodia or Delhi, and really can't imagine that it's happening right here," actress Demi Moore said at a briefing on Capitol Hill Tuesday. "As a society, we owe it to them to ensure this doesn't happen to anyone else."

Moore and her husband, Ashton Kutcher, recently created The Demi and Ashton Foundation to raise awareness about the issue of sex slavery worldwide.

The Department of Justice estimates that more than 250,000 American youth are at risk of becoming victims of commercial sexual exploitation. The average age of entry for female prostitutes in the United States is between 12 and 14 years, and children and youth older than 12 are prime targets for sexual exploitation by organized crime units, according to a 2001 report.

In addition to domestic girls who are exploited, about 14,500 to 17,500 girls from other countries are smuggled into the United States for this purpose, according to the State Department.

"We know so little about our daughters who are bought for sex," said Malika Saada Saar, president of The Rebecca Project for Human Rights, which organized the briefing Tuesday to bring attention to the issue of domestic sex trafficking.

There is a "cyber slave market that is being built up by Craigslist and other Web sites," Saada Saar said, and most of the time, the pimps who buy and sell these girls are never arrested or jailed.

Many of the children sold into the sex trade come from broken families or the foster care system. Often times, as in the case of M.S. and Asia, they are looking for an escape and for the one thing they say they didn't find at home, love.

"This is a new and emerging phenomenon. Ten years ago, there were not the same disturbing stories of traffickers seeking out and preying on girl runaways within 48 hours after they have left home," Saada Saar wrote in the Huffington Post.

"Why is this happening? There is the Internet, which has created an easy and accessible venue for the commercial sexual exploitation of children. As a result, young girls are the new commodities that traffickers and gangs are selling. And, there isn't a culture of crime and punishment for selling girls as there is for selling illegal drugs," she wrote.

Sex trafficking, especially of minor girls, has risen in the United States, experts say. The average female prostitute in the United States is between 12 and 14 years of age. More than 250,000 American youth are at risk of becoming victims of commercial sexual exploitation, according to the Department of Justice

Asia, who was lured into the trade at the age of 18, says it was eerie how well her pimp knew what she was looking for.

"It's like he knew I was vulnerable, and he was looking for people like me," she told ABC News. "He told me constantly he would take care of me, it wasn't going to be like this. ... It was like false promises but he made it sound so good. That's what he does, he was an expert at it."

The now 20-year-old who is studying criminal justice said her sole mission back then was to get through the day. Even when she was sick or stricken with infection, she was forced to have sex, often for up to 10 hours a day with 10 different men.

"I feel like all I was trying to do was survive, get away from home, just be happy, but it was never like that," said Asia, who was raised by her grandmother.

Asia said that once she was part of the sex trade, she didn't feel she had anyone to turn to. Like M.S., she didn't want to go back to her family out of shame and fear, and she didn't feel safe outside the vicinity of the hotels she lived in.

"It was like I was in a totally different world in society," Asia recalls. "Like when we would go out to eat, I felt everyone knew who I was and what I did and there was embarrassment. ... Being outside, you feel vulnerable."

Both M.S. and Asia said they were arrested and thrown into jail, and that the police treated them like criminals, even when they knew they were minors. Often times, police officers solicited their services, the girls said, or they had relationships with pimps.

"They would just send me to jail and keep me here for like a couple of months, then they'd release me thinking everything's good," M.S. said. "I was scared to run to the police or cops or something because you know... I don't think they'd really listen. They try to set up a date with you knowing that you were a minor. They didn't care."

Under U.S. law, human traffickers can get life in prison if convicted. But many of these traffickers are never caught. Both M.S. and Asia said their perpetrators are still roaming free.

Government officials say a key problem is lack of coordination between states and agencies, but that the government is looking at the root causes and how they can be eliminated.

Francey Hakes, the Justice Department's national coordinator for child exploitation prevention, said Tuesday the agency has arrested and charged hundreds of people with sexual exploitation and that it was doing more to address sex crimes against children.

"This is modern day slavery at its worst, and it's a winnable war," said Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., who sponsored a law targeting sex trafficking in the House.

The girls said all they want to do now is look to the future. M.S., who sought help at one of the Crittenton Foundation facilities, said she hopes to write a book some day to tell other girls in her position they can move on with their life. The 17-year-old said she is still having a hard time integrating into society because she can't trust anyone, even those who are trying to help her, but she will do anything to not return to her old life.

"I've seen a lot of girls get kidnapped. I've seen a lot of people get killed out there. I've seen a lot of things," M.S. said. "I would do anything to be a strong, independent woman."

Asia, who is currently a volunteer mentor at non-profit Fair Fund, said she wants to help change the system she was once a part of, but said the stigma of being a prostitute is not one that she can recover from easily. The student said she was supposed to go to the White House for meetings but was not able to get access because of her record.

"I'm not a criminal. I never hurt anybody. My intention was just to survive and it's just hard, it's not fair," she said. "Just look at me as a victim. Don't let my past prevent me for being the best person I can be, don't let it prevent me from getting a job or doing day-to-day things."

UNICEF: Child sex trafficking must end

UNICEF: Child sex trafficking must end

Thursday, 20 January 2000: UNICEF Executive Director Carol Bellamy today attacked the greed and brutal disregard for human rights which she said underpin the worldwide trafficking in children and women, most often for sexual exploitation.

Speaking in Tokyo at the Asia-Pacific Symposium on Trafficking in Persons, the UNICEF Executive Director said the problem was global but some of the worst forms were found in Asia, where more than a million people are being exploited each year.

"Trafficking - especially for commercial sexual exploitation - has become a worldwide, multi-billion-dollar industry," Bellamy told representatives of governments and civil society gathered to consider strategies for dealing with the issue. "Boys and girls are favoured targets for sexual exploitation and groups with low social standing are often the most vulnerable, such as minorities and refugees."

Bellamy said the illicit traffic was expanding through the use of child pornography on the Internet, and low cost Internet advertising of the commercial sex trade, attracting sex tourists and pedophiles. Many of these activities are explicitly banned in national legislation and Bellamy urged governments to confront the problem through a combination of law enforcement and education to warn parents and protect children from those who would prey on them.

Globalisation should benefit societies through increasing opportunities for international trade in goods and services, not by increasing the trade in human beings, Bellamy said.

"Instead we are seeing at least 10,000 girls and women entering Thailand from poorer neighbouring countries and ending up in commercial sex work," she said. "We believe that five to seven thousand Nepali girls are trafficked across the border to India each year, mostly ending up as sex workers in Bombay or New Delhi."

"Trafficking on this level cannot escape the attention of local and national law authorities and I call on the governments of these and other countries to enforce both their national laws and to accept their obligations under the Convention on the Rights of the Child," Bellamy said. She noted that every government in the Asia-Pacific region has ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child, legally binding them to protect their children from all forms of economic and sexual exploitation.

UNICEF's experience in these and other countries in Asia has shown that the effects of sexual exploitation on children are profound and may be permanent. Normal sexual, physical and emotional development is stunted. Self-esteem and confidence are undermined. Sexually exploited children are especially vulnerable to the effects of physical and verbal violence, drugs and sexually transmitted diseases.

Bellamy said there were no simple solutions. Societies must recognise that the root causes of trafficking often lie in discrimination against minorities, unequal treatment of women and girl-children, and economic policies which fail to ensure universal access to education and legal protection.

Bellamy praised Japan's recent adoption of new laws designed to punish those involved in child prostitution and pornography, including those who abduct or traffic in children for sexual purposes. The laws also protect child victims of such abuse, and aim at educating officials and the general public about the importance of child rights.

She also noted positive movements against child trafficking in India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. These include creating special bodies to protect child rights, the reform of juvenile justice systems, the training of police and judicial authorities and crackdowns on those who sexually exploit children.

UNICEF has been actively involved in advocacy efforts in Viet Nam, Cambodia -- where the National Council for Children has launched a five-year plan to fight child sexual exploitation and trafficking -- and China.